(c) Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co.
The Boston Globe, 4-26-95
BERLIN, N.H. -- The latest edition of this town's bruising little newspaper war is more civil than earlier editions. It has been months, for instance, since the publisher of one paper linked the publisher of the other, in print, to the colorful descriptives "psychopathic liar" and "staggering buffoon."
Around Berlin, this is taken as a sign of creeping detente.
Still, most readers in this rugged north country mill town (pop. 11,824 and falling) have no trouble recalling the high, or low, point of the war. That occurred in 1993, when the upstart Berlin Daily Sun, in a front-page editorial, compared Berlin, N.H., to Berlin, Germany, in the 1930s. And, at least by implication, Mayor Leo Ouellet to Adolf Hitler.
The Sun suggested that Ouellet, a decorated World War II veteran and staunch Republican, had been getting favorite son treatment from The Berlin Reporter, the older and more politically conservative of the town's two dailies. The tone of the editorial was harsh, the shrapnel content high.
"Among the first things to go when Hitler took control," the paper sputtered, after Ouellet had banned one of its reporters from a school-budget meeting, "were liberal educational studies, political opponents ... and freedom of the press."
The Sun went on to ask whether the mayor considered the rival Reporter his "mouthpiece" and the Sun his "enemy." An irate Ouellet had a ready response to that line of questioning. With the encouragement of Reporter owner Howard James, he sued the paper for defamation of character.
Ouellet was defeated for re-election later that year. His lawsuit lives on, a potent symbol of what can happen when two newspapers slug it out in a small, homogeneous community unaccustomed to hard-hitting journalism and fierce circulation wars. Win or lose.
According to The Newspaper Guild, the Berlin-Gorham area may be the tiniest market in the country to support two dailies (the Sun currently appears five times a week, the Reporter six). Statistics are not broken down precisely, says a Guild spokesman, although the number of big cities with two daily papers, including Boston, has shrunk to fewer than 10, thanks to soaring costs, dwindling readership and industry consolidation. Houston went under just this month.
In any case, numbers alone fail to explain the passion, and oddity, of this rivalry, now three years old and counting. Once home to the world's largest newsprint plant, Berlin looks more like a travel brochure for the dying New England mill town than an advertisement for journalistic entrepreneurship. The irony is hard to avoid. Famous for making newsprint, not news, Berlin in 1995 would appear to be sitting on limited supplies of each.
Still the battle rages. The puzzle is, why?
"I really thought this town wasn't big enough for the two of them," says Richard Poulin, chairman of the local zoning board and an advertiser in both papers. "I was dead wrong."
Says local radio host Rod Ross, "There's an element here of I'm-gonna-win-no-matter-what. Nothing Howard (James) does surprises me. He is a stubborn man."
A victory for readers?
At least Poulin and Ross see an upside to Berlin's war of the presses. Competition, they agree, has made the 112-year-old Reporter -- hastily converted by James from a weekly to a daily in the face of the Sun's challenge -- more aggressive. Aggressiveness plus increased frequency have in turn made local officials more accountable, and townspeople better informed.
"It's not such a joke anymore," says Robin Gallagher, 33, a businesswoman and Berlin native, speaking about the Reporter. "They're more professional. They report."
Recently, to cite a couple of examples, the Reporter broke stories in a single week about a $100,000 settlement (paid from city funds) to two former town employees and what the paper labeled a "secret" tax-abatement deal granted to Berlin's major employer, the James River Corp. paper mill. That was not typical editorial fare five years ago, when Ouellet occupied the mayor's office and the city council was bitterly divided, 4-4. Seldom would one read a discouraging word then about mayoral conduct-- or misconduct -- though James himself boasts hard-news credentials, having won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting with the Christian Science Monitor.
Both Reporter pieces were written by managing editor Ben Gagnon, 29, who says, "It amazes me that people in city government try to withhold information. With two papers around, getting away with it is that much harder."
Meanwhile, the Sun has carved out a reputation as Berlin's anti-establishment paper, the one least afraid to challenge the status quo in what has traditionally been a pro-union, Democratic town. Distributed free, with a current circulation of 7,200, it immediately raised the reportorial ante when it first appeared in March 1992. (The paid-circulation Reporter varies from 5,000 to 10,000, according to James.)
Thumbing its nose at the establishment, the Sun accused the chamber of commerce of running on a "good ol' boy" system. It printed small claims judgments, to the dismay of many. It published headlines that struck a lot of readers as scandalous or "worthy of the National Enquirer," as one local put it. It kicked over rocks. It worked hard to be heard. And it worked.
In the Sun's first year of operation, says Sun co-founder Dave Danforth, the paper lost money, as predicted. However, attendance at town meetings nearly doubled.
"Right from the start," maintains publisher Mark Guerringue, "we attracted strong critics of (Ouellet) to our pages. It wasn't personal. It was Leo's politics we didn't like."
From day one, concurs Sun editor Adam Hirshan, "We were on the offensive. People in Berlin saw us as the bad guy."
All three say the biggest jolt was printing opinions rarely aired in the Reporter, especially those critical of Ouellet. James himself became a target not only because he was chummy with the mayor, they add, but because he took competition from the Sun personally. Accusations soon flew that the new paper would "suck dollars" out of Berlin, and James was openly furious that the Sun tried to hire away one of his employees. According to Guerringue, who grew up in Berlin and once worked for James, "Howard can be his own worst enemy." Which made him vulnerable.
It also made him angry.
In Berlin, it is an article of faith that the love unlost between James, 56, and Guerringue, 39, has a lot to do with the town's suddenly having two newspapers, not one.
"I don't think they came in here purely for business reasons," James sniffs. "I knew Mark's father back when he owned one of the Conway papers, and I always had a lot of respect for him. But this thing made no sense at all."
Sylvia Poulin, a shopkeeper and head of the local chamber of commerce, worries the opposite of Richard Poulin (no relation): that the rivalry hurts Berlin by digging up too much "dirt" at a time when Berlin desperately needs to attract new businesses. And new taxpayers.
"I don't think this is a positive thing at all," she complains. "The papers were at each other's throats from the start. If you ask me, it's had a negative effect on this town."
Laying down the law
Berlin is not a big theater of operations. The city rises up steeply from the banks of the Androscoggin River, and what rises there is tattered and circumscribed. Editorial offices for the two papers sit five doors apart along Main Street, in a downtown area dotted with vacant storefronts. When reporters speak about bumping into each other on their way to stories, they often mean that literally.
But Berlin is also a friendly, folksy place, and clearly feelings in the trenches run warmer than feelings in the front offices. Sun managing editor Rose Dodge, for one, downplays differences between the two papers, noting that both have had their share of scoops lately.
"We compete," Dodge acknowledges, "but the rivalry is on a professional level. I see no animosity one way or the other."
Reporters likewise dismiss perceptions that they are less liberal, and less muckraking, than their counterparts at the Sun. While James' politics may be conservative, says general manager Deborah Harwell, there is "no criterion you have to be Republican to work here."
Harwell has worked for James and the Reporter for seven years. When Guerringue and Hirshan offered her a job with the Sun, it was she who passed along the information to James, triggering his decision to outflank the competiton.
Says Hartwell, "I honestly did not think there'd be enough news to fill one daily, never mind two. Once you went out looking for it, though, boy, it came to you."
The Reporter's Gagnon says it took time before people realized the two papers were not published by the same company. "People are still confused," admits Gagnon. "At times we've looked a lot alike."
James, a balding, mustachioed man in the Lou Grant mold, assumed control of the Reporter in 1972 when he married the young widow who owned it. He also owns weekly papers in Rumford and Norway, Maine, where he maintains his home and office. Like publishers everywhere, James complains of high costs and skimpy profits, if any. (The Reporter is considering cutting back to four editions a week, James reports, because of the soaring cost of newsprint; no decision has been reached yet.) However, he makes no apologies for his friendship with, or legal advice for, ex-mayor Ouellet.
"To be compared to Hitler was hurtful to Leo," says James. "It wasn't fair, especially for a man with his military record.
"I don't usually recommend that people sue newspapers," James continues, "but everything I know about this business says you cannot compare someone to a Nazi. That goes beyond the bounds. So I told Leo, 'Yeah, you probably have a case."'
The meeting that raised eyebrows at the Sun took place in Ouellet's living room, James says, where he urged the mayor to consult William Chapman, a top libel attorney and clerk for the Reporter's parent company. On principle, Chapman refuses to sue newspapers. Nevertheless, Ouellet claims, only after listening to his charges did Chapman tell Ouellet he couldn't represent him. From that point on the plot thickens.
Ouellet filed suit against the Sun claiming that in a series of columns and stories it unfairly depicted him as a "Nazi-like dictator" and "arrogant, autocratic leader." Also named were two city councilors who published letters highly critical of the mayor. Returning from a two-month sabbatical in 1993, Chapman discovered his firm had already agreed to defend the Sun. He signed on board, effectively pitting himself against James.
"I saw this case strictly as representing the press in a libel case," says Chapman, "not doing something to Howard James. I never gave competitive advice to either paper. Including Howard's."
Ouellet was unsure Chapman's hands were clean. He moved to disqualify Chapman in August 1994. A superior court judge denied the motion. Meanwhile, depositions have been taken in the case, scheduled for trial this October.An out-of-court settlement was reached earlier this winter between Ouelletand the city councilors. Terms were not disclosed.
An unfinished fight
With the lawsuit as a backdrop, the rival publishers brawled in print with bare-knuckled fury. The ostensible issue was whether Ouellet had been wronged by the Sun, and why. However, it was hard for most Berliners to escape the conclusion that Guerringue and James simply did not like each other and were using their columns to say so.
James charged Guerringue with spending "tens of thousands of dollars" of his late father's money on the Sun. He accused him of "smearing an old family friend," namely Ouellet.
"What if we wrote, without proof," James asked, "that Mark Guerringue ... is a psychopathic liar, an obsessive cheat, a two-bit bully, or a staggering buffoon? If the Sun's arguments are really right, and if Guerringue has become a public figure, then we should be able to say all those things and a lot more just because he runs a competing newspaper."
Guerringue was not amused. "Because the two newspapers are competitors," he fired back, "we frankly did not expect that our comrades in journalism would side with us in the noble battle to preserve free speech. To actually defend the mayor's lawsuit -- and trod unmercifully on the First Amendment along the way -- borders on the shameful."
Scoffing at the charge he was plowing family money into the business, Guerringue concluded, "Would I have grounds to sue Howard James for printing something which he knew was false, and that caused me harm? You bet. Would I have a stronger case than the mayor has against the Sun? You bet."
For now, at least, staff members at the Sun and rival Reporter are not preoccupied with the lawsuit. Ouellet, for other reasons, declines to discuss it at all. At his home overlooking the town he once ran, Ouellet comments cryptically that "Hitler used the big lie too. But that's what the courts are for."
Of his position in the newspaper crossfire, Ouellet says the damage has been inflicted on an entire community, not just him.
"Berlin has to believe in itself," he says. "I don't mean whitewash things. But you can't keep tearing things down and expect Berlin to live."
James predicts the suit will be pressed to the bitter end. He calls Ouellet "one of the most serious men I know." And the war for the hearts and minds -- and dollars -- of Berlin readers one well worth fighting.
"This is not my paper, it belongs to my wife and her kids," James insists. "If they want to inherit a paper in their father's town, they will have one. Whatever it takes."
Guerringue says the Sun too is here to stay. He sees the war as a classic battle of attrition, a test of wills and resources.
"The real question," he ventures, "is whether the market can support one daily, never mind two. Also how far Howard will go to fight this war."
How far, most Berliners have come to suspect, is not too hard to figure: as far as he needs to.
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